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YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Mud spring bubbles up in part of parking area By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Of The Gazette Staff YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - Motorists already watching out for bone-jarring potholes and wandering wildlife can now add one more item to the list of Yellowstone National Park driving challenges - a bubbling hot spring.
So far the new spring has consumed parts of two parking spaces and an asphalt sidewalk that separates the parking lot from the main concentration of mud pots, cauldrons and fumaroles at Mud Volcano. A wooden fence that park crews erected around the seething spring has occupied a few surrounding parking spaces, too. "These kinds of things can pop up anywhere - this one decided to do it in the parking lot," said Yellowstone Chief of Maintenance Tim Hudson. The new spring first revealed itself last month when steam began forcing its way from beneath the asphalt pavement of the parking lot and the pavement began subsiding, he said. Park staff immediately used traffic cones and barricades to mark the area off-limits to vehicles and then removed some of the overlying asphalt to keep it from caving in. They found a gaping cavern that widens as it deepens and holds a pool of steadily bubbling and steaming mud about 5 feet below the level of the parking lot. There were instances in Yellowstone decades ago when park crews filled in and paved over hot springs inconveniently located in planned roadways or parking lots, but Hudson did not know whether that had ever happened at Mud Volcano. An underground section of drain pipe is visible in the cavity that holds the new spring, so park workers must have excavated the area at some point, but no one is certain whether they encountered thermal activity there at the time. Because the water table at Mud Volcano lies far below ground, the area emits mainly steam instead of the hot water that power geysers in other parts of the park. It may be that the steam simply found a new route to the surface - through the parking lot. Hudson noted that it's possible the thermal feature could continue to spread. "We're not sure what we're going to do about it, but for now we have it fenced off," Hudson said. "Our approach is, 'Let's watch it and see what else is going to happen there.'"
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